Toshiba BDX2400 - Manual (Page 39)

English
39
When we speak of free software, we are referring
to freedom of use, not price. Our General Public
Licenses are designed to make sure that you have
the freedom to distribute copies of free software
(and charge for this service if you wish); that you
receive source code or can get it if you want it; that
you can change the software and use pieces of it in
new free programs; and that you are informed that
you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions
that forbid distributors to deny you these rights
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For example, if you distribute copies of the
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the recipients all the rights that we gave you. You
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the source code. If you link other code with the
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terms so they know their rights.
We protect your rights with a two-step method:
(1) we copyright the library, and (2) we offer you
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To protect each distributor, we want to make it
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Finally, software patents pose a constant threat
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we insist that any patent license obtained for a
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full freedom of use specifi ed in this license.
Most GNU software, including some libraries,
is covered by the ordinary GNU General Public
License. This license, the GNU Lesser General Public
License, applies to certain designated libraries, and
is quite different from the ordinary General Public
License. We use this license for certain libraries in
order to permit linking those libraries into non-free
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When a program is linked with a library, whether
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of the two is legally speaking a combined work,
a derivative of the original library. The ordinary
General Public License therefore permits such
linking only if the entire combination fi ts its criteria
of freedom. The Lesser General Public License
permits more lax criteria for linking other code with
the library.
We call this license the “Lesser” General Public
License because it does Less to protect the user’s
freedom than the ordinary General Public License.
It also provides other free software developers
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use the ordinary General Public License for many
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For example, on rare occasions, there may be a
special need to encourage the widest possible use
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standard. To achieve this, non-free programs must
be allowed to use the library. A more frequent case
is that a free library does the same job as widely
used non-free libraries.
In this case, there is little to gain by limiting the
free library to free software only, so we use the
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permission to use the GNU C Library in non-free
programs enables many more people to use the
whole GNU operating system, as well as its variant,
the GNU/Linux operating system.
Although the Lesser General Public License is Less
protective of the users’ freedom, it does ensure that
the user of a program that is linked with the Library
has the freedom and the wherewithal to run that
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The precise terms and conditions for copying,
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The former contains code derived from the library,
whereas the latter must be combined with the
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TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING,
DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION
0. This License Agreement applies to any software
library or other program which contains a notice
placed by the copyright holder or other authorized
party saying it may be distributed under the terms
of this Lesser General Public License (also called
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A “library” means a collection of software functions
and/or data prepared so as to be conveniently
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The “Library”, below, refers to any such software
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these terms. A “work based on the Library” means